Advantages of Fork System Call
- Creating new processes with the fork system call facilitates the running of several tasks concurrently within an operating system. The system’s efficiency and multitasking skills are improved by this concurrency.
- Code reuse: The child process inherits an exact duplicate of the parent process, including every code segment, when the fork system call is used. By using existing code, this feature encourages code reuse and streamlines the creation of complicated programmes.
- Memory Optimisation: When using the fork system call, the copy-on-write method optimises the use of memory. Initial memory overhead is minimised since parent and child processes share the same physical memory pages. Only when a process changes a shared memory page, improving memory efficiency, does copying take place.
- Process isolation is achieved by giving each process started by the fork system call its own memory area and set of resources. System stability and security are improved because of this isolation, which prevents processes from interfering with one another.
Fork System Call in Operating System
In many operating systems, the fork system call is an essential operation. The fork system call allows the creation of a new process. When a process calls the fork(), it duplicates itself, resulting in two processes running at the same time. The new process that is created is called a child process. It is a copy of the parent process. The fork system call is required for process creation and enables many important features such as parallel processing, multitasking, and the creation of complex process hierarchies.
It develops an entirely new process with a distinct execution setting. The new process has its own address space, and memory, and is a perfect duplicate of the caller process.
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